Our little one did not really begin eating complementary foods until she was 11 months old. We had tried earlier with rice cereal, fruit puree, and thin porridge, but nothing went well. She would take a couple of bites and spit them out, and if we tried again she would turn her head away and refuse.
Around 11 months, though, she slowly started showing interest in food. Whenever we sat down to eat, she wanted to join in. She still did not like porridge, but she was surprisingly interested in plain white rice and kept asking for more. Her grandmother worried the rice might be too hard for her, so she started making hand-rolled noodles instead.
To everyone’s surprise, the baby loved the noodles. She could finish a whole bowl very quickly. We were all happy that she was finally eating proper food, and it felt like her weight might finally start catching up. After that, Grandma made noodles twice a day, and she would finish them both.
A few days later, Grandma mentioned that the baby had gone one full day without a bowel movement. Normally she pooped once a day. On the second day, she did go, but the stool was dry. Then she went another three days without pooping.
By the fourth day, she would suddenly burst into tears while playing. Grandma thought her stomach might be hurting because she had not had a bowel movement in several days. We hurried online to look for solutions.
The advice we found was the usual kind: give more vegetables and fruit, offer more water, feed banana, even make banana mash. We tried following those suggestions, but she would not touch the banana at all. Before long, she had another crying spell that seemed to be from discomfort. Seeing how miserable she was, Jasmine suggested buying a glycerin enema.
The first time we used it, she resisted so much that not much of it went in. Even so, she passed two large, hard lumps of stool. They looked very dry. After that, she fell asleep.
The next day, she was still fussy and crying. Grandma took her to see a doctor. The doctor’s advice was much like what we had read online: offer more vegetables, give more water, and use the enema. So Grandma used a second one.
Not long afterward, the baby cried again and then fell asleep. When she woke up that afternoon, she started pooping, three or four times in total, but only a little each time. Every bowel movement came with crying and obvious discomfort.
On the third day, she started pooping as soon as she woke up. She was still groaning painfully each time. From morning until we got home from work, she had gone five or six times. Some of the stools were quite loose, almost like diarrhea. Then by 9 p.m. she pooped two more times.
What worried us most was that the stool no longer looked normal. It was grayish and sticky. Jasmine thought it might be intestinal mucus and wondered whether the enema had somehow seeped into the intestines. Grandma was convinced the enema had upset the baby’s stomach and insisted we go to the hospital.
The doctor asked about everything that had happened and looked at the stool, then answered our concerns one by one:
- The gray, sticky stool was old retained food and stool, not intestinal mucus, so there was no need to panic.
- The glycerin enema would not harm the body and would not seep into the intestines. Its main ingredient was soybean oil, and its role was to lubricate.
- The crying during bowel movements was not from stomach pain but from soreness around the bottom. The doctor checked and saw redness on both sides of her anus. He said that after pooping repeatedly for two or three days, that kind of redness was common.
- After using a glycerin enema, it can take three or four days of bowel movements before things settle back down.
Hearing that finally eased everyone’s mind. What had started as excitement over her finally eating solids turned into several anxious days of constipation, crying, and repeated diaper changes. At least by the end of the visit, we had a clearer explanation for what was happening and a little less fear about the enema itself.